Politics and Religion in Israel: State, Judaism and Secularism in the Long-term Perspective

The success of the extreme right and the religious parties in the most recent elections (2022) has shocked much of the Western liberal media. Yet, on a closer look, the (uneasy but close) relationship between politics and religion in Israel is nothing new. Religious Zionism was an established political force well before the World War I. The block of the religious parties came as the third strongest contender in the first post-independence elections of 1949. The ultra-orthodox Shas party reached its electoral height in 1999, winning 17 seats (compared to 11 seats today). Given the growing demography of the ultra-orthodox sector, one could have even expected a bigger imprint of the religious parties on the political landscape nowadays. Interestingly, the demands of the religious have remained relatively coherent, evolving from the opposition to women’s voting rights during the interwar era to the stubborn resistance to the prerogatives of the Supreme Court during the last seven decades. For their part, the secularist positions have been marked by a certain degree of vagueness. The dislike of the interference of the rabbinical authorities was apparent since the start. However, Israeli secularism proper has comprised a random mix of highly personalized attitudes, preferences and ad hoc opinions rather than any clearly articulated and affirmative vision of society as a whole. No version of Kemalism came to force in Israel, not to mention the absence of any (secular) constitution as such. Israeli “civil religion” (if one can use the term at all) remained ethno-centric. The best the once-hegemonic left could achieve at the heyday of its power was to reach an awkward set of compromises with the religious, referred to as the status quo, which lasts until today. Historically, the right has been split between the traditionalists and the agnostics. Though some may ask if the Israeli state is going to be Judaized in the (near) future, we should equally enquire into what sort of an alternative model have the secularists been able to conceive thus far.